Comment by mturmon

This comment is completely wrong, infuriatingly so.

I'm a NYRB subscriber. No national publication was more critical of the U.S. Iraq adventure, or more critical of U.S. torture and detention policies. And all this long before it became received wisdom. (A sample, with examples all the way back to 2003: http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/mark-danner/).

Before the war, the editor of the magazine (Robert Silvers), and several of its most influential writers, went on a national speaking tour to expose the risks of the adventure. UCLA wouldn't even let them hold the event there. They had to go to a smaller venue at Occidental College nearby.

It is ignorant and delusional to accuse them of somehow ignoring secular or left-leaning Arabs, and rubber-stamping American projects there.

I suggest, by the way, you read the post on ISIS that you scoffed at (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/aug/13/mystery...). You seem to have only skimmed the photos. The piece takes the ISIS phenomenon seriously as a political force, and tries to understand where it is headed and why it has been so successful. It ends with:

"I have often been tempted to argue that we simply need more and better information. But that is to underestimate the alien and bewildering nature of this phenomenon. To take only one example, five years ago not even the most austere Salafi theorists advocated the reintroduction of slavery; but ISIS has in fact imposed it. [...] It is not clear whether our culture can ever develop sufficient knowledge, rigor, imagination, and humility to grasp the phenomenon of ISIS. But for now, we should admit that we are not only horrified but baffled."

It is evident that this is not some kind of triumphalist perspective.